I love Ocean Salt body and face scrub by Lush Cosmetics. It's a handmade beauty product that exfoliates, brightens, and cleanses the skin—it contains powerful ingredients such as sea salt, vodka, grapefruit, lime, and a whole host of moisturizers, like avocado butter and coconut oil. The only downside to Ocean Salt is it's steep price, $21 for 4.2 oz., and $35 for 8.8 oz. Because I use it all over, it gets used up pretty quickly, and you can imagine how costly it is to replace it every few months. When you find an awesome product, that works well on your skin, you pretty much keep buying it, because you can't really do without it. I can definitely tell how my skin benefits from Ocean Salt, and so, it's important that I have it in my beauty arsenal, always. I did some research online, and found quite a few recipes for making it yourself, and since it didn't seem too hard to do, I thought I'd try it out. I'm not telling you to not buy Ocean Salt, if you can afford it, go for it, but, if you're on a budget and can't spare the extra cash for such a luxurious item, this DIY is for you.

The benefit of Lush products being handmade, is that you can easily recreate the products you love, because a lot of the ingredients are easy to obtain— you also have the benefit of customizing your product to more suit your skin type, and needs. I found many recipes for this particular product, and sort of cherry picked what I wanted, and omitted things that I didn't want. One of the big substitutions I made, was to replace raw avocado with a whipped coconut oil featuring avocado oil, glycerin, and aloe vera gel—raw avocado is moisturizing, and soothing, but, it's also perishable; I like making large batches of things, and storing them in my bathroom, so I made a creamy, lotion-like mixture of oils, that will provide just as much moisture (if not, more) as the avocado, but, it won't deteriorate. The whipped coconut oil was borrowed from something similar I make, and use in my hair, in fact, you could whip up some extra and use it for a hair mask, or an ultra-hydrating body lotion for after your bath or shower!

I'm not a stranger to using vodka as skincare, and I love the addition of it in this product. Vodka can be extremely drying, but, it is also very cleansing, and we made sure to balance out that dryness with that whipped coconut oil. By infusing the vodka with grapefruit, and lime, it adds lots of skin brightening, and toning qualities.

I think this scrub is a wonderful addition to your beauty regimen, that can be used on both your body, and your face. I was able to make a huge batch at barely the cost of one large tub of the Lush version. I'm glad that I figured out how to make my own, at a fraction of the cost, and, that works just as well as the original.

Citrus Infused Vodka: Peel both limes, place peels in a sterile glass container.

Chop one lime in half, and cut the half into smaller pieces, then add to your glass container.

Slice your grapefruit in half, and cut into smaller pieces, place into glass container.

Cover citrus with 1-2 cups of plain vodka, and cover. Infuse your vodka for 2-7 days, seven days is the preferred amount of time.

Whipped Coconut Oil:

Add coconut oil (do not pre-melt), avocado oil, olive oil, glycerin, and aloe vera gel to a large bowl, using a hand mixer on a low to medium setting, whip the mixture until it becomes creamy, almost a lotion-like consistency.

Finally, add your salt to the whipped coconut oil mixture. Stir until everything is well incorporated. Add in your infused vodka, and stir until everything is well incorporated. Add additional salt to your mixture, until you reach the consistency you desire.

Scoop your mixture into an airtight container, and enjoy!

I would recommend, as always, that you test this on your skin before doing a full application, as irritation can occur—for some people.

Much like everything I make, there is always room for omitting and adding in ingredients that you feel are more beneficial to your skin, you can also make a smaller batch than I did, it's totally customizable, and totally up to you!